Day 3913 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Revelation 21:8 NIV

Less is more

Especially when it comes to death! And yet, that seems to be quite sadly something we’re all but unable to see when looking at the world around us and the terrifying measure of it met within us and that often most dreadful of dead reflection we see daring to look back at us. Indeed, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s been a great many times within my life in which I’d catch a glimpse of myself and see only the shell of what could have been looking back.

And it’s that ghost of everything better that I could have been that stalks me again and again in what’s become a race in which I chase that which I cannot become simply because I find it better to reach for the impossible than to settle again for immorally illogical.

Because I’ve been there. I know the streets and have seen the scenes as they play out in what can only ever be a repetition just novel enough to coax us into believing that it’ll be something better this next time we fall back into our still being who we’ve always been alongside an arrogant audacity that such can somehow amount to the growth demanded of all plants planted.

No, I know that nothing grows in that which is already gone. And thus I’ve found I’ve no reason to be where I’ve already been because, having already been there, there’s just nothing left there for me to be. Unless I want to stay whatever it is that I already was. And while that’s quite glaringly the opportunity that much of society has so clearly settled for seeking, please do tell me:

What more is there to be if all we are is all we’ve been?

Does that not sound like death itself?

For to the best of my understanding, which, granted, is some days quite limited if not utterly compromised, it would seem that to live a life would demand some sign of life as is often only seen or shown inside of something moved, something grown. But that’s just the problem! How can we grow if we’ll not move? And yet how can we move if we’ll not go? And how can we even begin to pretend we’ve come or gone from anything and thus grown or lived in any way if we’ve nothing toward which to point but the same image we’ve lived to paint for however many years we’ve already given unto trying to pretend it perfected?

See, that’s the weird thing to me that I can’t help but always see here inside what is a world in which all have died and dare to live as if we can’t do it again. It’s that we all so clearly know the way to the nothing more we’ve already been or become, and as a people who prefer their paths with least resistance, we’re too a people who mind not going back. But is that in any way anything of what God’s created or called us to be?

Just a people who like dogs return to vomit or pigs waddle back to wallow?

No. He calls us rather to charge ahead into the fire in which we’re daily if not hourly refined by the heat which exists to beat the betrayals out of us so that we can become those so hardened in hope that Heaven is all that exists anymore. And yet it’s so easy to see that we’re all quite measurably far from having that kind of singular hope inside our hearts. It’s daily evident that we’re at least somewhat content with the content found within our current comforts.

And yet even that has never been anything promised to anyone along this narrow way.

A fact proven for all to see inside the scene of glory which played out in such horrific beauty upon that hill we call Calvary!

For Christ came not seeking comfort, a fact that proved obviously a good thing as we He found here so little. Indeed, within His Word we read that “foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” And even more than that, as we know of the pinnacle of the kind of surrender He came to show, His life here was cut short by those who chose not to know Him but rather to impress upon Him the elsewise apparently agreed upon punishment He was obviously found deserving of receiving.

And that for having done nothing.

Which is ironically exactly what we too have lived the majority of our lives choosing to do, both nothing and yet that accusing Christ of doing something that still somehow finds Him worthy of dying.

And granted, we don’t come right out and say it like that. At least not many of us do. Rather we say it inside our actions which speak unto the truth we’ve stored in our hearts. For if from the mouth pours that with which the heart is filled, so too then must the same be said of the actions which we all know to speak louder. And this is a massive issue because not only are we a people who love to hear ourselves talk but so too are we those who mind not acting in whatever part we’ve been playing inside whatever this life is that we’ve been living.

And that’s my question, and yes, one that I make sure to ask myself at the end of every single day:

What kind of life have you been living?

See, it’s sadly become the kind of question that nobody really feels so inclined as to actually take the time to answer. And while that could be for reasons many, anything from how we’re always just so busy to how we mostly think we’re doing pretty okay, the bottom line is that we’re mainly afraid of the answer itself. And why is that? Because it turns out that it doesn’t actually take someone being a pastor or holding a doctorate in Biblical study to see that we’re scum and villainy.

We are the very dregs of what is a most dreadful society!

And thus we know that it’s quite easy to understand where we deserve to go which will apparently be brutal even for the smell alone!

Sulfur stinks!!

And yet thus the promise here fits perfectly the pitifully pungent way of life we’ve been living. Indeed, from our words to our deeds they can smell that mess up in Heaven! Which is why God has determined that even dying once isn’t good enough. No, rather for those who continue to do as He simply asks us not to, well, does it not seem justified that those same should die unendingly? I mean, if we can’t manage to either pull ourselves together and get our act the same nor at the very least turn around and come heartbrokenly before He who came to save us from said inability, then why do we deserve to go on living?

Honestly! If we can’t get anything right in life but have even taken that amazing skill at failure and forged it into a way of life spent faithfully forsaking the Father simply because He merely asks that we at least try to do what we’ve simply grown not wanting to, why should He give us more time to do so?

We’ve shown Him enough.

And yet He’s patient with us!

I watched a clip of an R.C. Sproul Q&A kind of thing just yesterday in which the question was raised as to why God’s punishment upon Adam was so severe and so quick at that. And what he answered just blew me away at how beautifully powerful it was.

And it’s that we’ve become a people who live this way of life that has us going about our daily deeds doing things without ever thinking them through that thus has us lost inside some sense of entitlement in which we seem to assume that we’ve truly both the right to do whatever we want alongside an always accompanying right to thus face no costs or consequences. And it’s this brand of a life’s estimation that has allowed us to become so spiritually numb that we always find a way to pass the blame back to God for how He’s been all but forced to deal with a people such as us.

We ask questions like why was/is God’s wrath so brutal. We ask why He allows bad things to happen to good people. We ask why He doesn’t just choose to love us so much as to sit there silently and watch us lose our lives to every form of wickedness in which we can learn to delight. We ask Him why He doesn’t just hop back up on that cross so that we can spend one more day doing one more thing that we know is wrong but enjoy so much that we’d rather He die than not have our fun!

No friends, as Mr. Sproul said, it isn’t a question as to why God’s wrath upon Adam, upon us is so hard and heavy. No. The question is why it’s not harder! Why is He not more brutal? Why is He not more vengeful? Why is hell not already our home seeing as how we’ve all lived as if we’d not mind just hurrying up and finding the fires and feeling the flames?

Why is He patience with us when all we do is continue to misuse His Name and refuse His way and mock His will and want only our own fulfilled?

Why is God so good to a people who so clearly so often simply choose not to be?

And indeed, does not His patient relent of the justified punishment we’ve all earned a million times over not reserve the right to wield the knife and severe us from the opportunity to live a life at any time He may see fit for our having thrown all our fits and raised our fists and sunk our souls, these very ships into the cold hard filth of a life given unto the same?

For He created us to live, yes. This much is so clearly true as such is what we clearly are. We are all alive! But friends, what are we living our lives for? What are we building our lives toward? What use have we found within our lives that has been determined so purposeful that we’re pursuing it so passionately? Indeed, what are the passions we have in our lives that we’re chasing every measure of growth within as often as we can and however we might?

What in this life is being given the best of our might and is any of it deserving of more life that would thus be given unto the same?

And how can we honestly of this say that any sin we’re living is worthy of?

Because God knows we’re a stubborn and obstinate people who will continue to do as we’ve always done simply because we both mind not the outcomes and likely quite enjoy the simplicity of the repetition. But friends, is repeatedly doing whatever we’ve been doing truly deserving of more time to spend doing it? And how can this be considered reasonable if all we’ve been doing is living in sin and thus denying the Son?

Why would God give us more time to do that?

We should have never become so far gone as to do it in the first place!

And yet in this place such is what we know to do almost exclusively. Sin isn’t just defined as a singular action anymore that’s arguably made in either ignorance or simple mistake. No, we’ve all come to sin so much and so willfully, and to such alarming degrees that sin has become a way of life that all of us have lived! For many here sin is life itself as many here seem to awake with the pre-planned expectation of continuing to do whatever may well be vile or depraved or disgusting or even deadly.

Indeed, we’ve become a people who don’t even seem to mind taking a life.

Not that any of us ever will, but simply because all of us already have.

Bet you didn’t wake up today expecting to think about that!

And yet it’s the cold hard truth of this way of life we’ve come to lose. And I say lose rather than live because, well, can we honestly say that anything we’ve done could truly be considered living? For again, life moves. Life grows. Life knows that without some kind of hope life isn’t worth living at all. And yet what have our hopes been? What have our joys become? What excites us to begrudgingly roll ourselves out of bed in the morning?

Is it to pray? Are we all jacked up to read the Word? Does night find us losing sleep because we just can’t wait to see more of all that God created for us to enjoy, created in us to do? Or is not merely the solemn reality in which we never pray, never read the Bible, never seem to really enjoy anything anymore and honestly do our best to do even less?

Friends, what has life become and is it something that could ever be even potentially found worthy of being given more time to continue doing it?

See, I think the issue is that in our search for sin we’ve become so numb to time that we live this life as if we’ve always however much of it left that we may want. We hear folks say all the time that we’ve all the time in the world to do whatever it is that we may be discussing with them. But friends, is not that terrifying? That all the time we do have is but that spent in the world as this world is the only place in which time exists and yet it’s also the one place that it’s thus running out?

Yeah, we’ve all the time in the world to do or say or see or be whatever it is that we may well become even eventually inclined to try. But friends, we’ve only however much time we’ve been given to keep on living in this world to figure out both what to do with life and what may or may not come next.

And yet how can we possibly say we’ve given any thought to where we may go from here when it’s daily clear that we don’t really even think about what we’re doing before we go?

For if we did I don’t think we’d opt for quite so much sin. And why is that? Well, because who of those who are alive seeks actively for those things which cause them to die? Doesn’t death exist as the main contrarian to life? And yet is not sin defined as that which earns the wage of death? And is thus not a life given to living in sin a life choosing to die again and again? And does that way of life spent choosing to die in sin truly deserve more life to live?

No. That would be like buying an arsonist a lighter and some gasoline. Not much good can come from that.

And yet, is that not honestly what God should be saying about us?

That it’s become pretty clear that not much good can come from us?

After all, what good has He seen? What good have we done? What good do we care to be when we’ve become a people who rather seem to only mainly ask what good it is to try? Indeed, we all live anymore as if we might actually be better off just reaching that point in which we die so that we don’t have to endure all this misery anymore.

Why is life so miserable?

Is it not because of the choices we ourselves have come to make or those made by those around us? It’s not because God makes it miserable. He’s the One who created life then even went so far as lay down His own in order to help us see that there’s nothing He won’t do to help us live. He literally told us that was His entire purpose for coming! “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

What then are our lives full of? What are they filled with? What are we filled with, and well, does it deserve more life in which to fill more?

And why would He who created us to live give us more life to live if all we know to live for, all we want to live for is only that which deserves death?

No, that’s about as illogical as it gets!

And God’s not illogical but rather just and fair. He’s even so kind as to give us what we ask for. We read this in His Word too! That He will grant us the desires of our hearts! And well, that sounds really wonderful right up until that moment in which you finally come to realize that that which you’ve desired in your heart is nothing but the sin which earns the wage of death.

Yeah, that sucks to realize!

Why? Because He will give us what we ask for, and well, if our lives are spent within such a way that we ask Him all but every single day to let us live in sin, well my friends, He will oblige. He will let us die.

He’s even so very kind that He’s going to let some of us do it twice!

Question is why we’d want for that. And the bigger question is why we still can’t seem to see that such is what we’re asking for!

Friends, the point is that spending our lives doing such things as those listed here that each so clearly go against God’s beautiful intentions for we His creation in no way finds us deserving of more life to spend doing those things which go against He who created all of life. He doesn’t deserve to watch us go on living against Him, let alone to do so forever. No, again He’s seen enough already.

And yet we take His patience as weakness.

Guess one day we’ll all see just how weak He isn’t.

Question then becomes whether we’ll see it while we’ve still some time to do something about it or if time will have run out and our every such chance along with it.

Either way we’re all promised to die once as such is the punishment met for our having each sinned. Jesus came to take the second death in our stead.

But God will let us keep it if we just can’t bring ourselves to let it go.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold